Our view: In the balance

By the Midland Daily News

Published 6:54 am, Monday, June 25, 2012

As the nation holds its collective breath awaiting the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Patient Protection and Affordability Act, the administration’s spin doctors are doing their best to soften the blow should the court rule against one of the signature pieces of President Barack Obama’s legislation.

And so is the other side, those who want Obamacare, as it has become known, repealed in its entirety.

The challenge to what has been a decades-long Democratic dream to provide universal coverage came from 26 states. The “individual mandate,” the decision by the federal government to force Americans to purchase health insurance, is at the crux of the Supreme Court argument, just as it is at the crux of the health care legislation itself.

Obama and Democratic lawmakers promised insurance companies that in exchange for their support of the new legislation, they would get to cover about 30 million more people, mostly young people who don’t use much of the health care system, and who are gambling that they won’t. To that end, the law mandates that individuals purchase health insurance, or face government sanction. Opponents of the legislation argue that this requirement is unconstitutional, that even the Commerce Clause, which regulates trade across state borders, cannot be stretched enough to cover the language in this particular legislation.

The Patient Protection and Affordability Act has some good points, some of which might still be valid even if the Supreme Court rules against the individual mandate. This is what the Obama spin doctors are saying, that even if the individual mandate is defeated, Americans still can be covered even if they have pre-existing condititons, or if they are 25 years old and living with their parents, or even if they are senior citizens in what is known as the drug doughnut hole.

Opponents of the law, which include a majority of Americans, insist the entire law is overreach and should be discarded.

The Obama Administration cavalierly tossed aside any arguments as to the constitutionality of its 2,000+ page opus even as legal scholars across the political spectrum were urging caution. Then during the Supreme Court hearings, which resulted in a record number of oral hearings, it argued that the law would not survive without the individual mandate.

Now, today, those in the administration have to sit and wait, just like the rest of us, to learn the fate of the bill. But, they will still spin, with those on both sides complaining of “judicial activism.”

But it is our lives, not necessarily theirs, that rides in the balance.